


Go Tonight

by Dashicra1



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale to the rescue, Based on a musical theatre song, Crowley has a terrible aunt. I'm so sorry about her, Crowley's Bentley (Good Omens), Fluff and Angst, Genderqueer Crowley (Good Omens), Human AU, Mention of queerphobia, My First Work in This Fandom, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Other, The Bentley is just named Bentley and she's a hero, They don't know what they're doing but they're getting there guys I promise, They're both 17 and dumb, They/Them Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dashicra1/pseuds/Dashicra1
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley are inseparable, and have been since they were tiny. Growing up in a small town has its challenges, though, and soon enough their time together seems to be coming to a close. If he wants to make things right, Aziraphale has to make a decision and take a risk that will shake up his whole repressed little life.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Go Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! A very special thanks to the lovely @demonicxiconic for beta reading this for me! You rock! Also, shout out to "Go Tonight" from Mad Ones for getting stuck in my head until I couldn't take it anymore and wrote this. Another shout out to all my genderqueer friends out there: I love you all!

When his ever-faithful alarm inevitably woke him at 7:30 a.m., Aziraphale had almost convinced himself that the events of the previous night had been nothing but a horrible dream. However, Crowley’s voice still rang in his ears (though he was hard-pressed to think of a time when it didn’t), and the remnants of the cheap wine they’d shared soured his tongue. If only it had been a dream, he thought. Aziraphale eased himself slowly upright and made one last, valiant attempt to keep the memories from surfacing. He failed.  


_We can go off together,_ Crowley had said, and the words could not have been more beautiful. _It has to be now, angel. Please, Aziraphale, say you’ll go._  


He’d slumped, fully dressed, onto his bed after Crowley’d left him, unable to hear, think, understand anything except those words. Sleep had claimed him sometime in the wee hours of the morning, when he had already exhausted every other avoidance tactic in his considerable arsenal and didn’t mind the distraction one bit. Now, he minded. While he’d been asleep, the steady refrain of Crowley’s urging had cemented itself into his mind. Nightmares, they were, over and over again, turning the most beautiful words he’d ever heard into a weapon, every iteration reaffirming the one horrible truth he’d been trying to avoid.  


Aziraphale had refused. Again and again, he’d refused.  


He fumbled with the alarm, still blaring from its place on the table beside him, and cursed it for its punctuality, for its ability to measure the passage of time, when all Aziraphale wanted was for time to stop, just for a moment, just long enough for him to collect his thoughts. When the thing had at last been silenced, Aziraphale found he regretted the quiet even more.

_“She’s finally done it, angel. Called up that idiot cousin of mine--you know the one, Hastur, in Dunbarton. Says it’d serve me right, that all those hicks out in the country’ll teach me not to be myself.”  
_

_Crowley lounged across Bentley’s roof, insouciant as ever despite the tremor in their voice. (Bentley was their love, their noble steed, their fiery chariot, named for a long-dead family dog and equally as loyal. They’d saved up to buy it from the old man on Wickersham Street when they turned 15 and spent the next two years fixing it up. From the moment they’d gotten their license, which was almost a year ago now, they’d never let the thing out of their sight.)  
_

_They took a sloppy swig from the cheap bottle of red they’d probably snagged from the corner store down the street and passed it down to Aziraphale where he sat on the bonnet. He hesitated for a moment, staring accusingly down at the likely-stolen four-pound wine. Ultimately, he decided that Crowley had the right idea in getting sloshed after all.  
_

_“What do you intend to do?” Aziraphale heard himself ask, as if this were some ordinary Friday night conversation, as if Crowley’s black-lined eyes weren’t wet behind their glasses.  
_

_“Well, I’m not going to bloody Dunbarton if I can help it,” Crowley drawled, smirking down at Aziraphale in the way that they had before starting a food fight at Aziraphale’s twelfth birthday party, before hiding a frog in Gabriel’s locker, before proposing something wild and cunning and mischievous that would leave the town grumbling for weeks and Aziraphale just a bit more in love with them than before. Aziraphale felt the telltale shimmering feeling in his gut and told his gut to go stuff itself. (Not literally, of course, though Aziraphale was feeling a tad peckish, now that he thought of it.)  
_

_“Could you possibly ask your aunt to change her mind? You may still be able to convince her. Perhaps she would listen to reason--”  
_

_Crowley laughed. Oh, what a sound that was. Even after nearly fifteen years of knowing each other, Aziraphale could never get used to it.  
_

_“I’m being quite serious, Crowley. If she would only hear what you have to say--”  
_

_“The woman called me a--what was it she said? A ‘waste of human flesh.’ I think she’s made her position clear, angel.”  
_

_Aziraphale flinched. He tried to disguise it in a well-placed sip of wine, but he was sure that Crowley had seen.  
_

_It figured that some people in the town would view Crowley in a less-than-favorable light. They’d made a point of fashioning themself into the local delinquent, the one who parents told their children to avoid. Dark clothes, dark makeup, dark glasses, dark car, and a lustrous mane of hair like a crown of hellfire. It was enough to spark the hearts of anyone who saw them (Aziraphale very much included), whether for indignant anger or flustered desire. It was an image many years in the making.  
_

_Even as a child, Crowley had challenged the small town’s notions of what it meant to be a good person. They’d stolen apples from the corner store to share with the less privileged students for weeks before one little girl finally took it upon herself to get her own and brought an end to it all. (Eve had been caught and severely disciplined by her mother, and in her sobbing recollection of the events, she’d blamed Tony Crowley for leading her astray. Crowley had taken the subsequent townwide wrath, and their aunt’s vigorous punishments, and the school suspensions, with a grin on their face.)  
_

_No matter how edgy, how sharp, how mean Crowley wanted to appear, Aziraphale knew that there was no one on earth as pure or as loyal as they were. The fact that the rest of the town wouldn’t accept the warm, grey area that was Crowley’s existence proved a constant burr in Aziraphale’s heart. The fact that Crowley’s detractors saw fit to tell Crowley what they thought of them to their face, choosing to hurt a warm-blooded, kind person with brutal displays of simple-minded ignorance, was enough to make him bleed a bit inside. Crowley would resent open compassion, however, so Aziraphale kept it all shut tight within himself and hoped they knew anyway.  
_

_“Aziraphale? Hello? Having fun wool-gathering down there? Ugh. Wool-gathering. Did you know that there’s, what, 7 million sheep in Scotland? Bloody hell, how useful even are sheep? I think they should--”  
_

_“Yes, my dear. I am quite alright,” Aziraphale managed, drawing himself forcefully out of his long list of Crowley-related memories. “Thank you. It’s silly, but I suppose I was trying to understand what she meant by such a thing. That’s all.”  
_

_Crowley’s long fingers twitched where they’d curled against the edge of Bentley’s roof. “’Course, angel. I’m one hundred percent grade-A evil, I am. It’s a wonder old Auntie Chunter lasted this long, what with my--well, everything.” Crowley gestured down at themself, and Aziraphale restrained the impulse to take their hand. The smirk returned to their face, but it seemed more cautious than before. “That’s why I thought, ya know, before she packs me on a train to Scotland. We could, ah, go off together.”  
_

_Aziraphale’s skin suddenly felt two sizes too small. “Go off together?” He cursed himself for the trembling in his voice. He set the near-empty wine bottle against the windscreen, afraid that his suddenly-shaking hands would make a mess of things.  
_

_“Ya know, the two of us, getting gone before they come after me with the pitchforks. Your folks don’t exactly like my hanging around, and I know you don’t give a monkey’s what they think anyways, so we can. Go off together, that is. We can go. Together. Tonight.”  
_

_Aziraphale tried not to recoil from them in shock. It was true enough that Crowley could escape with relative ease (they did have a car, after all), but they were horribly wrong on one particular front. He did care, deeply, intensely, about what the Goodman family thought. Aziraphale’s family ran fourteen hospitals between Essex and London, and thirty-two churches. Aziraphale’s older brother, Gabriel, fancied himself becoming prime minister in four decades or less, and the family had no problem gearing all of their public resources into securing him a position on the Essex council as soon as he hit thirty. The Goodman family cared very much indeed for their image, and Crowley, the wild-haired delinquent, was certainly not a suitable match, friendly or otherwise, for their younger son. Their younger son was, himself, an afterthought, and the Goodmans barely cared to know him outside of giving him a list of unspoken rules to follow, a prepackaged future with a prepackaged personality. Rule number one: Be ordinary. Aziraphale hadn’t even told them that he was queer.  
_

_“Right. Well, if we could just take a moment to see sense, Crowley. There isn’t anywhere for us to go.”  
_

_Crowley, brave, beautiful, brilliant Crowley, reached down and took Aziraphale’s hand between their own. No, Aziraphale informed himself, it doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.  
_

_“I know, I know it’s sudden, and there’s a lot of questions, but we’d be together. We could be happy, and I’d get work somewhere, and you’d bring your books, and we’d find a place. I’ve saved everything I could. I kept it hidden from her, worked odd jobs for anyone who’d give me the time of day. I’ve got something to get us started. We can do it, angel, I know we can.”  
_

_A stab of anger sank into Aziraphale’s chest. Crowley had severed all ties with everyone around them, everyone but Aziraphale, ages ago. They didn’t seem to notice that Aziraphale didn’t have that luxury, could never have his own identity. The hope of it, that beautiful shimmering thing, glinted in his mind’s eye, but it existed for no other reason than to taunt Aziraphale with what could never be. How often had he sat and examined that hope? How many days had he watched Crowley’s car disappear around the corner after they’d met up somewhere?  
_

_Every time, he was left to clutch at his chest and beat back a hope so fierce that he almost felt lit from within. Every time, he returned to a beautiful tomb of a house set on a hill away from the rest of the town. Every time, he wandered the long, empty hallways and searched for any sign that he lived there at all. Every time, he saw his brother’s smarmy face glower down at him from a single portrait in the sitting room and knew that his own life was inconsequential, but somehow still dictated, determined, owned by someone greater than he. Every time, the hope was shut back inside its cage until the next time he saw Crowley. Now it had awakened again, stronger than ever before, and he felt sick.  
_

_“I--It’s all so much. We hardly know each other--”  
_

_“We do,” Crowley hissed. “You know me better than anyone in this blasted town. I’d like to think I know you better, too. Why are you doing this? Please, we don’t have much time left. It has to be now, angel. Please, Aziraphale, say you’ll go.”  
_

_They let go of Aziraphale’s hand to take off their sunglasses then, and Aziraphale gasped back tears of his own at the sight of their eyes. Their eyeliner was smudged half to oblivion, and it was clear that they’d been crying long before they’d met up with Aziraphale. There was hurt scrawled across Crowley’s sharp features, but their eyes retained the faintest glow of hope, tender and forgiving and patient, a twin to the hope Aziraphale fought at that very moment, at every moment he spent with Crowley. It was too much. He looked away.  
_

_“No, you don’t understand, Crowley. It’s too fast. You go too fast for me. You always have. I can’t be dragged into every little scheme of yours--”  
_

_“Scheme! For the love of--! You think this is a scheme, Aziraphale? I’ve just told you why I’m asking this, and maybe it’s a crazy, hare-brained idea to everyone else, but we aren’t everyone else. We can be together, be ourselves, if we go tonight.”  
_

_Aziraphale stared at his hands and wished, and cursed himself for wishing, and cursed himself for loving. He slid from Bentley’s bonnet and stood, if for no other reason than to prevent himself from reaching for Crowley in a fit of weakness. Crowley fell silent for several long moments before they heaved in an unsteady breath and spoke again.  
_

_“Please, I’m begging you, it has to be now. I’m going to ask you again, and if you’ll just think about it for ten seconds before you answer, I’ll leave it alone. Aziraphale, angel, will you come away with me tonight?”  
_

_Aziraphale clasped his hands so tightly in front of him that he could feel his bones creaking. One, two, three, Gabriel’s press conferences, his constituents, lining up to catch a glimpse of the polished councilman, the perfect politician, four, five, the tabloids raving about the mysterious disappearance of the youngest Goodman, six, the crushing awareness that his family would never leave him be without stripping him of every last tie he had with them, seven, he could never return to his family home, eight, what if Crowley tired of him, nine, what if Crowley knew what this--what they--meant to him and refused him in a few years anyway, ten.  
_

_“I’m sorry, Crowley. I can’t.” The tears flowed freely now, and the hope, that glowing, fluttering, loving thing he’d quietly nurtured for the last decade or more, shuddered and went dark.  
_

_He looked up, finally, to seek out Crowley’s face, to drive the truth of it home, to watch the one he loved the most pick themself up and soldier on with a grin like always, and was met with nothing but night sky.  
Crowley was gone. _

Aziraphale stood from his bed and set out to make himself presentable, fumbling through his wardrobe with clouded eyes. He had to find Crowley, apologize, explain his motives, justify his reasoning. Perhaps they would even come out of this little argument whole and with a greater understanding of each other. His hands paused as they slid over his selection of identical dress shirts. Aziraphale knew, he knew that none of his wishful thinking was logical. Crowley would leave him alone soon, and he would have to live with the fact, as he went about the rest of his life, that he was alone entirely because he’d said no.  


_What if,_ volunteered an internal voice that sounded very much like Crowley’s, _What if you said yes? What would be happening now? What would you do?_  


The rest of his mind raced to reply, playing scene after scene of him and Crowley packing up the few possessions that mattered to them, placing Aziraphale’s treasured first-editions gently into boxes, packing the books into Bentley’s boot alongside Crowley’s cassette collection and a bag or two of clothes, the two of them laughing and smiling and making jokes, high on adrenaline and freedom and love. The hope he’d thought thoroughly dead the night before made a breathtaking resurgence at the love idea, soaring up into his chest.  


There was love, wasn’t there? Sometimes when Crowley looked at him, he could hardly describe the emotion in their eyes as anything else. So, yes, there would be love between them, even if Crowley wasn’t interested in him like that (and honestly, why should that matter to him anyway? It never had before). The road would be long because they would have no idea where they were going, but happy for the same reason, and they would be together, as they were always meant to be and always had been. Aziraphale’s life with Crowley would begin so easily: books, boxes, fold, pack, drive, love, together. The more he thought of it, the less he remembered the arguments that had marched along in perfect uniform the night before. What was keeping them apart, truly?  


The Goodman family didn’t care where he went or what he did so long as he kept out of trouble and hit the marks they’d set out for him. Would it not be easier to tell them the truth, to go out hand-in-hand with a blaze of fire, to prove to Gabriel and his parents that no matter what they said or did, the Goodman’s second son would never, could never, fit in with their design? They would surely leave him alone then. Why on earth would they bother to track down a person whose presence was more trouble to their name than he was worth? No, Gabriel would sooner never see him again than call him Brother. Not to mention the PR disaster if they ever tried to track him down. He stifled a laugh at the thought and imagined the joyful schadenfreude on Crowley’s face if they ever saw those headlines.  


Aziraphale came back to himself, only to realize that his hands had been moving without his permission. Where once there had been rows of neatly pressed and starched shirts, there were now empty hangers. The shirts, he found, were waiting for him atop his bed, folded and ready for a journey.  
Is it so simple?  


A beam of sunlight slipped in through his window then, and with it a strange shadow manifested on his bedroom floor. Aziraphale turned and was struck by a sense of confusion and dread so visceral that he nearly staggered with it. There, duct-taped to the outside of his window, was Bentley’s key, complete with its novelty snake keychain. He rushed across the room and forced the window open enough that he could slide his hand around and yank the precious thing to safety. The overgrown trellis to the left of his room bore fresh, muddied footprints among the leaves. Crowley. But why? They would never leave Bentley behind, unless--  


Aziraphale was out the door in the next moment.  


Sure enough, Crowley had never returned for Bentley where it had been parked down the street from the Goodman house the night prior, having apparently left all and sundry to wonder at their absence. Had they walked home, then? Were they injured in their haste to get as far away from Aziraphale and his rejections as possible? Seized by a curiosity too powerful to shake and praying that Crowley would forgive him for the trespass, Aziraphale unlocked the boot and peered inside. Crowley’s cassette collection stared back at him, packed neatly into a box and organized by genre.  


_It has to be now, angel.  
_

_We can be together, be ourselves, if we go tonight.  
_

_Aziraphale, angel, will you come away with me tonight?  
_

_Tonight._  


Tonight. Crowley really had meant to leave immediately. Why didn’t they bring these cassettes with them to wherever they’d gone? Why did they leave Bentley? Why were the keys taped to Aziraphale’s window?  


His heart sank like a stone until it had nearly dropped into his feet, and he fought himself back from thinking the worst. It couldn’t be what it looked like.  


He thanked his lucky stars that his old flip-phone remained in his pocket where he’d left it the night prior, and that it still retained enough charge for a call or two. Crowley did not answer. He tried again, to no avail. His battery was dwindling now. Should he try the local police? Would they care? Almost certainly not, and it wouldn’t be the first time Crowley had disappeared in plain sight or done something worthy of concern. The local police had Crowley’s name and license plate number memorized at this point. Aziraphale frantically searched through his contacts until he found the number he’d had since primary school but never had occasion (or desire) to use.  


Crowley’s aunt picked up on the fifth ring.  


“What the hell do you want?”  


“Um, hello. Aziraphale Goodman, speaking. Might you have any idea where Crowley could be this morning?”  


“Listen here, Goodman. On any other day, I wouldn’t have a damn clue. But today, I can finally say I don’t have a goddamn clue and probably won’t for the foreseeable future, if I get good and lucky. That kid’s finally out on his ear.”  


Aziraphale’s jaw clenched.  


“Pardon me, but what exactly do you mean by that?”  


“I mean he’s gone, out, packed up and on a train to Scotland. Dropped him off at the station this morning and he’s like to never show his face in my doorway again, thank God.”  


The blood in Aziraphale’s face made a downward dive to reside with his heart somewhere in his shoes. “You drove them to the station, you said? Why not have them drive on their own?”  


“Hah!” The woman’s voice broke into hacking laughter for a moment, and Aziraphale swore he could smell the decades of tobacco smoke on her breath through the telephone. “You’re that rich tosser who humored him all that time, aren’t you? Ridiculous. You’re half the reason I wanted him gone. And yeah, I sent him packing, got him on the train myself. There weren’t no way he wouldn’t have found some way to stick around and make my life miserable if I’d have left him on his own. Can’t wait to get rid of that blasted car of his. Been stinking up my front drive for too many years already.”  


“When was their train meant to depart?” This conversation was deeply taxing for a number of reasons, and Aziraphale filed another pang of sympathy for Crowley away in his head. How could he ever have thought, even for a moment, that he was the only one suffering when Crowley had this to come home to?  


“Shoulda left three hours ago or so. Was a bitch gettin up so early, but I’d take a thousand early mornings to get that waste out of my house.”  


“Madam,” Aziraphale began, voice as calm as he could make it. “You are a despicable person. Thank you for your insight.”  


He wanted to say, _I love them. I will not ever hear a foul word about them. How dare you. I love them, more than anyone else on this earth ever could._ He didn’t. Crowley deserved to hear those words from him first, and he refused to use his love as a weapon when Crowley themself did not know the truth of it. Instead, he ended the call with a near-obscene amount of relish, unlocked Bentley’s driver’s side door, and tossed his phone carelessly into the passenger seat.  


It seemed that Crowley had taken a head start. The key had not been a farewell, some tragic swan song. Rather, it was an invitation, a final act of hope, born from the eternal optimism Crowley carried within themself. _Come to me. I’ll be waiting. I’ll wait for you forever. Here I am, angel. Do you see me?_


End file.
